I used to be a costumer for live theater (thus the pervious posts). I have recently retired and blog about the crafty/fun/creative things that happen in and around our home. I still love to sew and will be posting some tutorials from time to time. I also love baking and cooking - yum.

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Sunday, January 25, 2015

Once upon a time there was a mom and a dad with 6 fantastic kids. And then they found out that number 7 was on the way! It was pretty exciting all the way around. The older girls (11-15ish) were thrilled to know there would be a baby they could play. The older boy's weren't so super excited about a baby, but they were cool about it and looking forward to a new sibling. It didn't help that the older boys each had their own room, but to make room for the new baby the boys would be sharing a room. If you know who Felix and Oscar are... you're old like me - and you'll understand that my boys are quite similar to this famous Odd Couple.
Mom started cleaning up the new babies room, painting each wall a different pastel - green, yellow, pink and purple.

She stenciled little butterflies around the whole room. The ceiling was painted light blue, with puffy white clouds - with one special cloud shaped like a heart. That heart would be right above the babies crib.

Little butterflies hung from the ceiling by little wires and thumb tacks. The most adorable fan was hung from the ceiling. Anyone who saw the room was in awe of how cute and fresh it was. It was genuinely the perfect fairytale room for our new baby girl. I may have shed some tears when it came time to paint over this heart. Okay, I cried. I tried to get Austin to do it for me but he declined.

You may remember this picture from the previous post - but I wanted to share it with you again so you can see how her cute dresser matched the whole color scheme of the bedroom.

And here we are - eleven years later. And our perfect little room had been through a lot of living. (as you can see in this picture). With our older kids moving out, and the littles moving upstairs (and ready for big kid rooms) it was time to turn this beautiful (and by now beat up) baby room into a more sophisticated guest bedroom.

I chose to go simple and paint the walls a very light grey and keep the trim a crisp white.

Here you can see the painted walls (we haven't switched out the ceiling fan yet...) And, because this happened over summer break, I had LOADS of help from the littles. And Sophie... She decided to paint the wall with her rear end. Silly puppy. Now if you've been keeping up with my posts, you will know that it is impossible for me to do anything without getting hurt. This time is ridiculous. You see, my left side is still numb - and it's super funky. So one day I stood up and took a few steps and BAM! The worst pain started throbbing in my foot. Apparently I was ready to move, but no one told the muscles in my foot that we were getting up and moving. After a day or two of dealing with the throbbing pain I decided to go to urgent care and get an x-ray. Of course I had to take the littles with me, but they're super good kids and are pretty well behaved. Check out my awesome parenting in this picture. They say a picture says a thousand words - well, this one speaks volumes... of minecraft...

Here they are, my handsome boys waiting so patiently while I get my foot checked out. They were like that the entire time. I could have left for hours and they would still be like that - not even knowing I was gone. Oh wait - that's not true because they'd need to charge their phones... and then despair would set in and their worlds would end tragically. Stupid game. But first - my foot wasn't broken, but I was sent home with this horrible shoe...

Honestly - first the nurse tried to give me one that was GINORMOUS. So I asked for a smaller shoe. She came back with the smaller size, which was a child size and she told me it wouldn't fit properly. Well, I tried it on and it's too big as well. But whatever - this is what I got. Just think - Me, the tripper onner of all things I could possibly trip on in a funky square toed shoe... Folks - this shoe was NOT a good idea. I'll just leave it at that. And tell you that I wore it for approximately 2 hours total. I just kept my foot elevated as much as I could (you know, between painting the guest room and doing mom stuff) and sucked up the pain. Eye roll.

Okay - back to the guest room! While painting the doors white, I got bored and decided to jazz it up a bit. I taped off the rectangles in the middle of the doors and painted them grey like the walls and the rest of the door white. First I painted the actual bedroom door because it's open most of the time, and if it came out horrible it wouldn't really show much...

At the same time, Roo was kitty sitting Darth Claudious - my grandkittybaby for her older brother and his wife. They gave a big high five on how the guest room turned out! Kitty also loved to watch me paint. That roller was highly entertaining for this little cutie!
As you can see, the door turned out fantastic - so fantastic that I went ahead and did the closet doors to match.

My antique sewing machine lives in the guest room so I shined it up and put a lace runner on top to help protect it from anything being put on top of it. Then I found this vase in a cupboard, the flowers at walmart and I filled up the bottom of the vase with some clear bead/gem/pebble things I had just waiting for a project. The mirror we got years ago for free. It used to have a dark wood finish on it (and it used to hang in the bathroom of my costume shop!). I painted it white and it matches great!

We chose to put the kids old dresser in the room so our guests could have somewhere to put their things. I also set up the old costume shop computer so guests could have Internet access. I moved framed pictures from other places in the house onto the shelves and I used the candles that previously lived in the living room as decor. At this point there wasn't any art on the walls. And this room needed some more color pronto!
Below is the art I chose to put in this spot. It looks a little squished right now because we had to move the dresser over a bit when Austin and I moved into the guest room after our bedroom was flooded... a whole nother blog post...

Even squished, it's still cute.

The beautiful peacock I just felt attached to when I saw it at the store. I was looking for something with more red in it - but I kept going back to this pretty bird. So I brought it home. I haven't named it yet - feel free to leave suggestions. ;) The star and the heart are above the head of the bed. They're super cute and have a nice message on them. I hope the crisp new paint and the warm messages on the walls help our guests feel comfy and welcome in our home. I'm happy with the way this room looks. I love the butterflies and clouds from the past, but that's why we take pictures - right?
Another room done - get ready for the next because it's SO AMAZING I think you're gonna flip. Meanwhile, feel free to come visit and stay in our pretty new guest room! See for yourself how comfy it is!
If you enjoy this blog, please share it with your friends. I'd love to hear your comments as well!

I'll be back soon with the twins bedroom! You'll love it. I promise! TTFN!
Reb

Monday, January 19, 2015

Like everything in my life - this is way late in being turned from a bunch of photo's on my computer to an actual blog post. This project happened in March 2014. But hey - it's FINALLY HERE! The beginning of my nutty home improvement DIY projects. After countless hours watching HGTV, surfing the Houzz website, pinning on Pinterest and perusing countless magazines, I decided to jump in and actually start updating our house. Logically, I started with the smallest non-bathroom in the house. My little Rayroo's bedroom! It was overdue - painted for another child a few years back and not really set up for my little artist. Here's how we transformed a small boy's bedroom into this:

But first! A little (or a lot... possibly way too much...) history of this bedroom. When we first moved in, this room was my sewing/craft room. As I said above, it's the smallest non-bedroom in the house. In all honesty, this room was actually built to be a bathroom. The original builder had it plumbed to be a bathroom - though it has never been one. The homeowners before us used the room as a walk in closet - as it has an adjoining door to the next bedroom as well as a door to the loft. Now, before anyone gets all Harry Potter on me - the room measures approximately 10X12, which is plenty big enough for a bedroom. After the older kids started moving out, I moved my sewing room into the adjoining room and turned this one into a guest bedroom. When our oldest son was moving home after his mission, I painted it bright turquoise with black accents and tried to make it a comfortable space for him. (Heaven forbid I move my sewing stuff back in here and give him his old actual bedroom back, right?) Yup. just add another gold star to my Worlds Worst Mom award. ;). Okay - back to the bedroom history - when our son moved out this room went back to being a guest bedroom. When we moved my sewing room downstairs (because the stairs aren't always the easiest for me), our twins moved upstairs into the bedroom adjoining this room. (more on that project to come!!) I must say that ALL of the littles BEGGED to have this little room. Honestly and truly begged us to let them have it for their bedroom. With the older kids all on their own we have plenty of space for each of the littles to have their own healthy size bedroom - but they wanted the small room. Since the twins were in the bigger room, it only made sense to put Rayroo into this room. By now this room wasn't as cool and awesome as it was when it was first painted - making it kind of sad looking. I forgot to take an official "before" picture - but here's one shortly after I took the bed out of the room:

The bedroom was overstuffed with furniture, toys never again to be played with and loads of arts and crafts projects and supplies. With the smaller space, storage solutions was the only option to keeping this space even remotely usable for this artistic genus. But first - taking almost everything out of the room was a must do in order to get to the walls. Clearing out toys from days gone by, missing socks hiding in the corners and all things bizarre along the way, we loaded up the loft with the contents of Roo's life. And then, amid the upstairs/downstairs, cleaning up, sorting and priming the walls for paint I stubbed my toe on this nice stack of really hard stuff from her room...

I swear I have never stubbed my toe that hard in my LIFE. Thankfully it was on my left foot - which is mostly numb anyway. Basically it added a little extra painful oomph in my limp. Ha ha.

Okay! Back to the bedroom! Geesh - I keep getting side tracked. I promise I don't have ADHD. I think.

AAGGHHH! Side tracked again!! Back to the bedroom now...

After priming and painting the walls - which is way more work than it sounds. That means paint the room once with primer, and three times with "one coat" paint. (eye roll) I say "whatever" to whoever tested this paint and actually called it one coat. Either that or their standards of actually painting a wall and looking good aren't mine. (It wasn't even the cheap stuff - it's the nicest paint in the store.) Okay... end rant... After all of that painting we had fresh, crisp looking walls!

Honestly - there's not much that makes me happier than fresh, crisp, clean walls. I LOVE clean! It's a curse. Or a blessing. I'm not sure.

Anyway, between coats of wall painting, Roo and I went to work painting her dresser. We purchased this dresser when she was an infant from an unfinished furniture shop. I painted it white, and each drawer was a different pastel color - matching her then bedroom. (teaser - more on THAT bedroom in an up and coming blog post!!). Well, something had to happen to that dresser to turn it into something a tween would love. We painted it white - the whole thing. And it's beautiful!

Before moving everything back in, I shampooed the carpet with our trusty Rug Doctor. Then I painted the black shelves white, and started putting the room back together again. This time with less furniture, less toys, and little cubbies to hold Roo's treasures.

Aaahhh! So fresh and clean!!! It just makes my heart happy. Ha ha.

We used some of the grid wall we kept from the shop and used it as a place where she could hang up her bags, hats, belts and bow ties. (the door to the right in the picture is the door that leads to the adjoining bedroom. The open door to the left is the door to the loft).

Because part of the bedroom is like a little cubby, Roo and I decided it would be the perfect art studio area. I used the writing desk I had in a different room as her new art desk. I thrift shop hopped to find mason jars in different shapes as well as baskets and crates to paint and hang on the wall to store supplies.

Here's a little better shot of the desk and wall. (the desk opens up for storage - with cubbies to hold things like glue, scissors, pens, chalk, paper, etc.) We purchased a roll of butcher paper for the kids (Roo) to paint on - so I found a hanger-upper thing and hung it up on the little side wall for her to paint on. It fits PERFECTLY!

The marks on the wall are from painting previous masterpieces. Roo can pull down the paper, tack or tape it to the wall and paint or draw whatever she wants to. Then tear it off and start again! And then I needed a chair to go with her cute little desk. And I found this little gem on the front patio...

Gross, yes? Yes. But not for long! I took the seat off, cut a new wooden base using the existing nasty one as a pattern. I spray painted the frame yellow and picked out some fabric to cover the new seat. Voila! Or however that's spelt. A brand new chair!

Whooo Hoo!!! Can you say BEAUTIFUL?!? Love it!

I used coordinating fabric to make a custom roman style shade for her window, and another coordinating fabric that we made a "pouf" chair out of. It was so much fun we made 2 of them! We stuffed them with bean bag foam balls (that go every-freakin-where!!) that I found at Walmart and cut up foam left over from other projects. Just FYI - cutting up foam is one of the suckiest jobs ever... it's worse than cleaning out the vacuum after sucking up little bean bag foam balls... Back to the room! One of the poufs she keeps at the end of her bed, and one she keeps on her bed behind her pillows. You can kind of see them in the pictures. We found a throw rug on clearance at Target ($35! Done!) because she hates the plain carpet.

Now my baby girl has a super cute and stylish bedroom designed just for her. She loves it, her friends love it, and the planets are again aligned in her world. AND it's the end of my first DIY project... It was a lot of work, it was a lot of fun, and it wasn't too overwhelming. Perhaps one of my favorite parts of the whole thing is this little weird cubby I found. It was some icky color with chipped paint and everything yucky when I bought it - but I cleaned it up and painted it and we found these cute little potion bottles to put in it. There's glitter in the bottles - multi purpose as craft storage and super cuteness!

Never fear - I have many more projects to tell you all about! Next up: The Guest Room... Stay tuned for more creative awesomeness!!!

About Me

My name is Rebecca. I'm wife to Austin, mother to Angie, Spencer, Luke, Christina, Jamie, Robin, Roo, Aaron and Benjamin, Mother-in-law to Stuart, Rachel and Eric, Grammy to Maisy and Jack (and baby on the way!). Sophie is my trusty furry friend. I'm CEO at Willcox International Headquarters and stay home mom for the "littles". In another life (or a few years ago) I was a costumer for live theater - see older posts. I retired for multiple chronic health issues - however my mind is always working on my next 5 projects (or more)! Follow the blog for updates and info on what's going on in our world.